being a consumptive; but I buried Bill just the week before I
got your letter."

"Wus he dead?" Bugsey asked quickly.

"Dead?" Aunt Kate gasped. "Well, I should say he was."
"My, I'm glad!" Bugsey exclaimed.

Aunt Kate demanded an explanation for his gladness.

"I guess he's glad, because then you could come and see us, Auntie,"
Mary said. Mary was a diplomat.

"'Tain't that," Bugsey said frankly. "I am glad my Uncle Bill is
dead, cos it would be an awful thing for her to bury him if he
wasn't!"

Mrs. Shenstone sat down quickly and looked anxiously around her
brother's family.

"John," she said, "they're all right wise, are they?"

"Oh, I guess so," he answered cheerfully, "as far as we can tell yet,
anyway."

At supper she was given the cushioned chair and the cup and saucer
that had no crack. She made a quick pass with her hand and slipped
something under the edge of her plate, and it was only the keen eyes
of Danny, sitting beside her, that saw what had happened, and even he
did not believe what he had seen until, leaning out of his chair, he
looked searchingly into his aunt's face.

"She's tuck out her teeth!" he cried. "I saw her."

Pearlie endeavoured to quiet Danny, but Mrs. Shenstone was by no
means embarrassed. "You see, Jane," she said to Mrs. Watson, "I just
wear them when I go out. They're real good-lookin' teeth, but they're
no good to chew with. There must be something wrong with them. Mother
never could chew with them, either--they were mother's, you know and
I guess they couldn't ha' been made right in the first place."

Patsey, who was waiting for the second table, came around and had a
look at them.

"Them's the kind to have, you bet," he said to Tommy, who was also
one of the unemployed; "she can take them out if they ache, and let
them ache as much as they've' a mind to." Tommy had had some
experience with toothache, and spoke with feeling.

Mrs. Shenstone was a woman of uncertain age, and was of that variety
of people who look as old when they are twenty-five as they will ever
look. She was dressed in rusty mourning, which did not escape the
sharp eyes of her young nephews.

"When did you say Uncle Bill died?" Jimmy asked.

"Just four weeks to-morrow," she said, and launched away into an
elaborate description of Bill's last hours.

"Did you get yer black dress then?" Mary asked, before Pearl could
get her nudged into silence.

"No; I didn't," Aunt Kate answered, not at all